Human Authenticity and the Question of God in the Philosophy of Bernard Lonergan

• Authors: Lubos Rojka
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

In his Insight, Lonergan presents a general form of the argument for the existence of God: “reality is completely intelligible, therefore, God exists.” Its framework may be characterized as a Leibnizian version of the cosmological argument from the contingency of empirical reality to the unrestricted act of understanding. The acceptance of Lonergan's argument presupposes familiarity with his theory of being and objectivity. In my analysis, since Lonergan uses heuristic (second order) definitions and dialectical method in his justification of the complete intelligibility of reality, the argument invites continuous examination of the proposed alternative metaphysical theories.

Keywords

EN

Authenticity; God proof; heuristic; ontology; objectivity; Lonergan Bernard

• Publisher: Akademia Ignatianum w Krakowie
• Journal: Forum Philosophicum
• Year: 2008
• Volume: 13
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 31-49

Dates

published

2008

Contributors

author

Lubos Rojka

• University of Trnava, Slovakia

References

• Braine, David. The Reality of Time and the Existence of God: The Project of Proving God's Existence. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988.
• Byrne, Patrick. “Bernard Lonergan's Insight: A Comprehensive Commentary.” Theological Studies 65, no. 4 (2004): 891–893. doi:10.1177/004056390406500433.
• Craig, William Lane. The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz. Eugene. Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2001.
• Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008.
• Dennett, Daniel. Breaking the Spell. London: Penguin Books, 2006.
• Donceel, J. F. The Searching Mind: An Introduction to a Philosophy of God. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979.
• Emmet, Dorothy. “The Double Conversion of Bernard Lonergan and Karl Rahner.” Theoria to Theory 7, no. 2 (1973): 9–16.
• Habito, Ruben L. F. “A Catholic Debate on God: Dewart and Lonergan.” Philippine Studies 18, no. 3 (1970): 558–576.
• Hepburn, Ronald. “Transcendental Method: Lonergan’s Arguments for the Existence of God.” Theoria to Theory 7, no. 3 (1973): 46–50.
• Haught, John F. 2008, „Amateur Atheists: Why the New Atheism Isn’t Serious.” The Christian Century, February 26, 2008, 22–29.
• Jaramillo, Alicia. “The Necessity of Raising the Questions of God: Aquinas and Lonergan on the Quest after Complete Intelligibility.” The Thomist 71, no. 2 (2007): 221–267.
• Knasas, John F. X. Being and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists. New York: Fordham University Press, 2003.
• Liddy, Richard M. Startling Strangeness: Reading Lonergan's Insight. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2007.
• Lonergan, Bernard. Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan. Vol. 3, Insight: a Study of Human Understanding, edited by Frederick E. Crowe. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992.
• Lonergan, Bernard. Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan. Vol. 17, Philosophical and theological papers 1965–1980, edited by Robert C. Croken and Robert M. Doran. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004.
• Lonergan, Bernard. Philosophy of God and Theology. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1973.
• Lonergan, Bernard. Method in Theology. London: Darton Longman &Todd, 1972.
• MacIntosh, John James, and Hugo Anthony Meynell, eds. Faith, Scepticism and Personal Identity: A Festschrift for Terence Penelhum. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1994.
• Quesnell, Quentin. “What Kind of Proof is Insight 19?” Lonergan Workshop 8 (1990): 265–277.
• Rojka, Ľuboš. The Eternity of God: Comparative Study of Bernard Lonergan SJ and Richard Swinburne. Trnava: Dobrá Kniha, 2005.
• Tekippe, Terry J. Bernard Lonergan's Insight: A Comprehensive Commentary. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2003.
• Tyrrell, Bernard. Bernard Lonergan’s Philosophy of God, University of Notre Dame Press, 1974.
• Wilson, Patricia. “Human Knowledge of God’s Existence in the Theology of Bernard Lonergan.” The Thomist 35, no. 2 (1971): 259–275.

Identifiers

DOI

10.5840/forphil20081313

URI

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=33116054&lang=pl&site=ehost-live

URI

http://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase?openform&fp=forphil&id=forphil_2008_0013_0001_0031_0049